Mac: If you use Google Voice for SMS and voicemail, and you're tired of keeping it up in a tab or picking up your phone every time a new message comes in or you want to hear the message someone's left you, GrowlVoice is a handy Mac utility that puts Google Voice square in your menubar so you can read and listen to your Google Voice voicemail, respond to SMS messages from your desktop, star, archive, and delete messages, and even get Growl notifications when someone's sent you a text or left you a voicemail.

GrowlVoice isn't new, but the team behind the app recently took the wraps off of their 2.0 version, which adds some personalization options and the ability to tweak the color theme of the app to match your tastes. Among the personalization tweaks you get are the ability to use Google Voice's own keyboard shortcuts to compose new messages, place Google Voice calls from your desktop, open your inbox, and more. You can also set your own keyboard shortcuts for each task if you prefer. You can also completely manage your messages and Google Voice inboxes with labels, stars, and filters. Essentially, everything you can do from the web, you can do in the app.

If you're interested, GrowlVoice is available as a 3 week free trial, but after that you'll have to decide whether you love it enough to drop $5 to own it. We think you will. Do you already use GrowlVoice, or do you have an alternative? Share your thoughts in the comments below.